Description

On the night he decides to jump off his Upper West Side rooftop, a prep school teen encounters a lost girl dancing on the ledge. They split cigarettes, spill secrets, and hatch an unexpected plan: to play out a romantic relationship over the course of one night, and discover whether magic can truly exist. As the game propels them through scattered haunts of the city, the line that separates fantasy from reality blurs, leading each to reconsider what is real, what is illusion, and whether the dawn will bring with it a new beginning or a violent end.

In his triumphant debut novel, newcomer Nathaniel Kressen weaves a real-time psychological love story, introducing two unforgettable characters searching for meaning in post-9/11 New York City.

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Insights

Concrete Fever features a technicolor gatefold cover and five interior illustrations by Jessie T. Kressen, which were modeled on actors enacting scenes from the book.

The story of the novel was based on a stage play by Nathaniel that was produced in NYC in 2007, titled Jumper’s with the Gypsy.

Nathaniel taught himself how to bind books and personally stitched the first 200 copies of Concrete Fever by hand. Jessie painted each cover with a unique combination of colors. This initial run funded the 2013 paperback release. The book is now in its second printing.